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HomeHow Oligonucleotide Therapeutics May Defeat COVID-19

How Oligonucleotide Therapeutics May Defeat COVID-19
Arthur M. Krieg, M.D.

Monday, July 20, 2020


Our Penn's Village audience learned how the COVID-19 virus works and how oligonucleotide therapeutics may stop it. 

After 30+ years of research and development, these therapies are beginning to treat a wide range of diseases. They provide new approaches to vaccine development with vaccines that teach our immune system how to defeat new viruses, ones that have never before infected humans, like the coronavirus. Vaccine development to prevent this infection is a critical topic in today's pandemic-afflicted world.

Arthur M. Krieg, M.D. has worked in the field of nucleotide therapeutics since the 1980s. In 2004 he co-founded The Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, a non-profit group of scientists dedicated to the development of drugs based on RNA and DNA technologies.

Prior to that he trained in Immunology/Rheumatology at NIH and then joined the University of Iowa, becoming Professor of Internal Medicine. Dr. Krieg discovered the immune stimulatory CpG DNA in 1994, which led to a new approach to vaccine development via immunotherapy and vaccine adjuvants.

Most recently he founded Checkmate Pharmaceuticals in 2015 to develop immune activating CpG for cancer immunotherapy. He is currently Professor in the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts.